Pros

Cons

Bottom Line

The Dell Latitude 7390's eighth-generation Intel Core i7 power and excellent battery life propel it to the upper echelon of our favorite 2-in-1 business convertible laptops.

18 Apr 2018

The Dell Latitude 7390 2-in-1 (starts at $1,149; $2,209 as configured) packs in a lot of the features that IT departments consider necessary for deploying to their fleets. It's backed by a powerful eighth-generation Intel Core i7 CPU, has all-day battery life, and offers a fingerprint reader and face-recognition camera for secure logins. It comes within a hair of unseating our current top choice for business convertibles, the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2. But the G2, with its multitude of display options and other niceties, retains its top spot.

Basic-Business Black

Design-wise, the Latitude 7390 2-in-1 (which is also available in a traditional clam shell option) is a black, soft-touch slab; it could easily be mistaken for a Lenovo Yoga if not for the chrome Dell logo in the lid. The system is solidly built, with no flex when you grasp the screen corners and only the tiniest amount when you pound on the keyboard deck. The display barely wobbles when swiped or tapped in Laptop or Stand mode.

At 0.75 by 12 by 8.3 inches (HWD), the Latitude 7390 2-in-1 is thicker, but more compact than the HP EliteBook x360, which measures 0.59 by 12.5 by 8.6 inches. The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9365) has them both beat at 0.54 by 12 by 7.8 inches. While only a weakling would call the Latitude 7390 2-in-1 a burden in a briefcase, it is heavier than the HP x360 convertible—3.2 versus 2.84 pounds. The extra weight is noticeable when trying to hold the system in Tablet mode, but it's not unbearable, and all convertibles are heavier than true tablets or detachable 2-in-1's that can jettison their keyboards.

Open the lid, and you'll see the full HD display bracketed by fashionably thin side bezels—too thin to accommodate your thumbs when holding the unit in Tablet mode. The top bezel is bigger, to make room for an infrared webcam that's compatible with Windows Hello face-recognition logins (password haters can choose from the webcam or a fingerprint reader below the keyboard). The camera captures slightly dark, but serviceable selfies and videos.

The Latitude 7390 2-in-1 offers a complete array of ports. On the left are two Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports that can also be used as DisplayPorts and either of which can be used with the supplied AC adapter. It also has an HDMI port and a SmartCard slot. On the right, you'll find an audio jack, a microSD card slot, a micro SIM tray for optional mobile broadband, and a Noble lock slot, as well as the power button and volume rocker. (As with almost every laptop I've tried with the power button on the side, I sometimes inadvertently put the Latitude 7390 2-in-1 to sleep when grasping the unit to move it around my desk.) Finally, there are two Type-A USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, one on each side. Wireless support includes 802.11ac, Bluetooth, and near-field communication (NFC).

Put Your Hands Together

The backlit keyboard has a nicely snappy typing feel, and I'm always happy to see dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys (the first two on the top row, the last two down by the cursor arrows). I was less happy, however, to discover that the keys are ever so slightly smaller and placed closer together than normal—the A through apostrophe keys span just under 7.7 inches instead of the desktop-standard 8 inches.

This isn't enough to preclude typing, even fast typing, but it's noticeable enough to be annoying, to require conscious care every so often, instead of a steady flow of ideas from your brain to the keyboard. On a happier note, the touchpad is smallish, but taps and glides smoothly, with two large, rubbery buttons beneath.

The Dell's bottom-mounted speakers can easily fill a midsize room, but they're more suited to business conferences than enjoying music. MP3s sounded flat and thin, as well as distorted when I cranked the volume past 80 percent.

The visual half of audiovisuals fares much better: The 13.3-inch screen is more than bright enough at its upper settings, with wide viewing angles and deep colors. Contrast is ample, and fine details in 1080p videos look sharp. The Latitude 7390 2-in-1 arrived with Windows' zoom set to 150 percent, which I thought made icons and the Start menu a bit bulky, so I dialed it down to 125 percent.

Let's Hear It for "Kaby Lake R"

The Latitude 7390 2-in-1 is powered by an Intel Core i7-8650U processor, a 1.9GHz quad-core CPU with Intel's vPro manageability features and UHD 620 integrated graphics, along with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive (SSD). This eighth-generation CPU gives it an edge over convertibles with seventh-gen, dual-core chips in our processor-intensive Cinebench measurement and Handbrake video editing exercise. The Latitude 7390 2-in-1's Handbrake time of 1 minute and 16 seconds was almost a full minute faster than its Dell Latitude 7389 2-in-1 predecessor and the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2.

The system also scored higher in our PCMark 8 office productivity benchmark test, though by a lesser margin, and in truth all the 2-in-1 systems in our test group scored more than highly enough to indicate no trouble with the likes of Word and PowerPoint.

On the other hand, you shouldn't interpret our test unit's victories in our 3DMark, Heaven, and Valley tests as signs that it's capable of PC gaming—it was merely tops in a low-scoring crowd, showing for the umpteenth time that systems with integrated graphics are good for casual or solitary games, but not for the latest fast-twitch titles.

More to the point for these productivity partners, the Latitude 7390 2-in-1 was a close second to the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2 in battery life, showing close to 14 hours in our video-playback test. It'll easily get you through a workday, plus an evening's Tablet-mode entertainment, or through a long flight in Stand or Tent mode on an airline tray table.

Toss a Coin

The Dell Latitude 7390 2-in-1 comes close to unseating the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2 as our Editors' Choice business convertible. It doesn't quite do so, because we think its extra weight and crowded keyboard offset its benchmark performance, and because we're a fan of a few HP extras, such as the Skype control keys and WorkWise smartphone app. But if the HP EliteBook wins, it's by a razor-thin margin. The Latitude 7390 2-in-1 is a top-notch choice for a convertible laptop; if your IT manager prefers deploying Dells to handing out HP systems, you've got nothing to complain about.

Dell Latitude 7390 2-in-1

excellent

Bottom Line: The Dell Latitude 7390's eighth-generation Intel Core i7 power and excellent battery life propel it to the upper echelon of our favorite 2-in-1 business convertible laptops.

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About the Author

Formerly editor-in-chief of Home Office Computing, Eric Grevstad is a contributing editor for PCMag and Computer Shopper, where he earlier served as lead laptop analyst and executive editor, respectively. A tech journalist since the TRS-80 and Apple II days, Grevstad specializes in lightweight laptops, all-in-one desktops, and productivity software, all of which he uses when commuting and telecommuting between PC Labs and a cat-filled home office in Old Greenwich, CT. Email him at homeoffice.eric@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @EricGrevstad. See Full Bio